The Hague - Mar 07

David and I entered the CPC (City-Pier-City) half marathon in the Hague again this year, so the Lees drove down from France on the Thursday and Jeannie joined us on the Friday night.

The whole week before everyone else arrived, I had been working in the Hague offices and wistfully looking at the fantastic weather outside..the soft sunsets and vague feeling of Spring in the air. I took the Friday off hoping that I would be able to join the Lees and Graham on a lovely sunny day at the beach and of course I should have known that I could not break my raingod hoodoo. It was a lot cooler so we decided to pop off to Delft to do the touristy thing.

Graham and Karen

The Daft Dally in Delft...
We pottered around (no pun of course), taking in the beautiful buildings and churches. We intended buying some pottery gifts so wandered off into the main square which is bordered with pretty little shops littered with all these blue and white eye delicacies, until you look at the prices and then they become the type of delicacy you look at and leave for someone else to taste.....you need a special kind of house to display these goodies (and a special kind of purse). Obviously I am quite a savage as they did not quite move me as much as the big yellow clog that Karen and I had a rest in outside one of the tourist shops selling plastic tulips.

There were two old women who lived in a shoe flanked by tulips and buildings of blue...here we were clogging up the pavement...ha ha ha...who needs a yellow submarine??

In the end we amused ourselves by taking photos of one another and watching some oddballs set up a bright new shiny ladder in the middle of the town square which was then climbed by a bearded one with a camera who waited for his two friends to go forth and drag victims to a position in front of the ladder from which the bearded one could shoot them - with the camera of course. All very arty farty but it did make us look at the people milling about the square with new interest as we tried to decide whether they had interesting faces for portraits or not. I think we were too scared to walk past them in case they did not find us interesting enough to photograph so we gave them a wide berth. You can see the ladder in this picture, with a victim staring up at the guy with the camera.

One of the churches leans a bit so we tried to balance it out here.

Double decker Dodos

This pod was just hanging from a tree in the old Nunnery, we think David Blaine was here. You could see the poo-plundering-plumbing-pipe connecting the pod to the ground.
Is this the lady who had a wine named after her?

White fang! Too sweet to eat his own sugar of course. Yeah yeah..

The Lees in a quiet moment......

You-know-who-who

Jeannie and Jenny
Karen and Jeannie having a chin-wag, not sure who is chinning and who is wagging.

Behind bars (vase) in the Sofitel Hotel reception


We were here for a run after all. David had a wonky knee which got wonked up more and more each time he tried to persuade it to run more than 3 steps, which did not stop him trying to get it to work properly. He had a sock tied around it so tightly at one stage that we thought the bottom part of his leg would fall off at the next step. He still got dressed to run the race with me, but the injury was just too bad so he had to retire, which was disappointing for both of us, David cos he couldn't run and me cos I had to start on my own!

This was taken near the end, hence the smile.


David did manage to join me at the end so I had company for the last few 100 metres or so.


I don't know what was so funny?


How many can fit in a photo booth?

My favourite shop in The Hague in the background whilst David tries to be strong man (or Orange man). The shop I am talking about caters for tall women, i.e. I can get tights that don't hang in the crotch like a baby's bodger ridden nappy and they have the best selection of socks and undies in such a small space.



Karen trapped in Orange County..

And we finished off the weekend with a last scrum in the lift enough to give any poor ant lurking on the floor nightmares for life!